It was the tail end of the silent era, and screen goddess Clara Bow was surrounded by users, liars, thieves and con artists. Clara was Hollywood's first and still-reigning It Girl; vivacious, beautiful, modern and talented, audiences loved Clara and she loved them back. She had far less love for the studios she worked for, Hollywood snobs, and the agents and executives who ran her career as though she were a machine to be pushed until it broke down, and then discarded for something new.
Read moreThe antiheroes of film noir are almost always loners. Hardboiled detectives trying to clear their name, gangsters who learned early on that no one could be trusted, a lone insurance investigator certain there's a big story underneath that mundane pile of paperwork; sure, they might have some pals here and there to do them a favor, a girl or two will come and go in their lives, but at the heart of it, they walk alone. It's a defining characteristic of the film noir cycle, so ...
Read moreThe economic boom of the Roaring Twenties came to a screeching halt with the stock market crash of October, 1929, throwing the world into economic depression. It's impossible to overstate the hardship and uncertainty people endured during The Great Depression, when nearly every industry was struggling after the crash. This seemed not to be the case in Hollywood, however, as studios reassured the public that their industry was stable, even booming. Insiders confided to the trades ...
Read moreIf there was ever any doubt that movie studios in the pre-Code era were fully aware of the financial perks of naughtiness, films like Parachute Jumper and Call Me Savage (both 1932), with their laundry lists of violations of the Production Code, put those doubts to rest. Scandal sold so well that even otherwise innocuous dramas ensured a little titillation was included. These spicy bits, however, had to be set apart from the rest of the film so they could be removed by state censorship boards wi...
Read moreThe films of John Huston have few similarities between them save for broad, humanistic themes common to the literary works Huston often chose to adapt for screen. As he once said, directing a film was 'simply an extension of the process of writing,' thus he stuck to no single genre, something that has irritated auteurists and critics alike. Exasperated with the inability to neatly categorize Huston's oeuvre, Francois Truffaut wrote, 'Will John Huston always be no more than an amateur?' while And...
Read moreHe had that face, that laugh, and that coast-to-coast grin that was a little aw-shucks humility and all sinister intent underneath. Richard Widmark often played characters so far in shadow they were invisible, yet your eyes were always searching for him in the frame. An innocuous 'come on' or 'heya, pal' had you leaning forward in your seat, rapt and unblinking, simultaneously fascinated and worried about what he would do next. Widmark possessed a delicious, contradictory combination of boyish c...
Read moreKay Francis was Hollywood glamour personified, playing strong, modern women while looking fabulous in the highest fashions of the day. Arriving in Hollywood in the late 1920s, just as talkies took over, Kay by all rights should never have been a star. She was beautiful, but sported a mild speech impediment during the years when studios worried over their stars' voices, and she lacked substantial experience -- she had lied her way on stage almost on whim, and had not formally trained as an actres...
Read moreGangsters wielding sharp suits and even sharper grins. Tommy guns and Model As roaring through dark city nights. Ladies in slinky dresses, a dozen diamond bracelets dripping from their arms. Dancing girls, incorrigible cads and man-made monsters. These characters all walked the streets of the pre-Code era, roughly four years of American cinema made during talkie era, before the implementation of what was known as the Production Code. Though always technically subject to restriction and censorshi...
Read more